With rapid technological change as well as global consolidation in industries from

banking to telecommunications, companies need Chief Executives and managers skilled

in running complex enterprises. Companies need to cast their net wider for managerial
talent and have meaningful processes for grooming potential Chief Executives. They also
need to do a better job of drilling down into the organization to spot and nurture future
leaders early in their careers and develop a system of succession planning on a continuing
basis.

In order to meet these challenges, the Tata Group is taking some major initiatives
in key areas. The group is focusing on human resources, as potentially the most important
aspect of the group's change agenda. A survey was done to assess the needs of companies
and managers in the group. The findings that emerged were:

mobility for growth

competitive remuneration;

performance measurement system;

potential assessment system;

group training inputs

group resourcing

Group HR mandate?

To attract good people, retain the better people and advance the
best people. They are seeking to construct an integrated HR system, in which the
central backbone will be the Tata Work Level. Around this concept they will have a
performance measurement system,(PMS) potential assessment system (PAS), career
development system (CDS) and a remuneration policy (RP), all held together by an
organized methodology to enable the system to operate in harmony.

A company manages its business through two kinds of work –

1. managerial work, done by people with clear authority and accountability, and
with influence over resource allocation;
2. the second is supervisory work, done by skilled people who implement assigned
tasks and report to managers.

To fit the proposed Tata framework, the whole group’s management jobs will be studied.
There can be a maximum of six Tata Work Levels (TWL), though not every company
will have all six levels. TWLs will be determined by the level of challenge in the job, so
it is the backbone of the HR framework which will be implemented.
Work levels are determined by two factors;

1. the Company Scope (CS) and

2. the Management Scope (MS).

The intersection of these two is the Tata Work Level. – A is the highest and F the
lowest.

They have classified our companies into three scopes - they call them Scope 1 Company,
Scope 2 Company and Scope 3 Company, naturally, all companies don’t have the same
scope. Scope 1 companies are complex and/or large as measured by parameters such as
turnover, profits, manpower, nature of competition, extent of co-ordination and control
required. Scope 2 companies are large companies but less complex, whereas Scope 3
companies are medium sized.

Management scope is de-linked from Company Scope. It tells you at what level of
managerial work you are within the company irrespective of the size or the complexity of
the company. Management scope 6 is typically the lowest level of management, with
some functional responsibility in a line or staff function to deliver results in a fairly
defined structure of customers, technology, geography and time frame.

As we progress along the ladder the management scope increases to encompass

leadership, performance and accountability. At the highest level, scope1, the individual
concerned, usually the chief executive, will be responsible for running the enterprise,
delivering results and ensuring shareholder returns.
Traditionally, we look at the organisation as a pyramid with the Chief Executive and
senior management at the top and others at different levels of the pyramid. If you use a
windscreen wiper model and plot the management scope on the y-axis and company
scope on the x-axis, then, the work and scope of the manager is very wide in a large and
complex company and the wind screen wiper is at A, the highest level. The highest
quality of work gets done here. This area has the smallest number of jobs but is largest in
leadership demand.

Obviously, between companies the quality of work will differ for the same management
scope. Under the new framework, managers can aspire over a period of time in their
career to move upwards from work level F to work level A. Today they have a situation
in the group where people just change designations. The new initiatives have nothing to
do with designations. It is to give insight to the CEO and top management of companies
into how to get a flatter hierarchy and give their managers better quality jobs. We would
like to have managers who are motivated to produce the highest quality of work.

Career development is largely about spotting good people, giving them job mobility,
rotation and progression up the organisation structure. They have developed a model
wherein an individual’s capacity to progress up the organisation can be tracked based on
the work levels they have defined and the experience and exposure of the individual
concerned. They will gradually implement a structured methodology to manage our
human resources and manager’s expectations from the group.

There are some functions like HR and finance, which do not have a sector bias and, thus,
can be freely rotated across companies operating in different business sectors. Others like
technology, research and manufacturing are sector-specific functions, which, while have
limited scope for rotation across companies, can nevertheless be used in different
functions to develop their general management. Both functions have potential to rise to
general management or to be functional specialists.

A Tata leader is required to develop six characteristics through his career. The more
senior the leader, the more of these qualities they are required to exemplify. The
characteristics are:

How do you identify potential leaders in such a large group with over 10,000 managers?
By bringing increasing levels of objectivity and order into the entire exercise, all
managers in the group will be continuously evaluated on the basis of a matrix that maps
their "Energy"(emotional intelligence) with their "Experience" (intuition) gained over the
years. Typical leaders are those with multi-functional and multi-location experience and
have very high levels of energy – both physical, emotional and intellectual. They look
and conduct themselves as highly energetic people.

The analysis provided by such a matrix allows the group to keep track of the potential
leaders in the group and harness their abilities for the group’s progress. The matrix is
fairly self-explanatory and provides a rational basis for tracking key managers. The
exercise will also help in identifying high performers or proven leaders.

The company is the unit where potential and performance of the manager is assessed and
this is the foundation of the system. Those meeting certain criteria will come into the
group’s radar screen, but the position is not assured for all times.

: Of the good performers how do you identify the outstanding leaders?

A very significant departure from the past is the process of managing career development
of employee’s group-wide, instead of looking at specific companies only. A key to this is
the consultative process between the companies and the GEO. For instance if a company
needs to recruit a resource of a certain level of seniority, they will need to do so in
consultation with the GEO as there could be a good resource within the group. What we
are saying here is that as the work levels rise in a company, the degree of consultation
with the Group Executive Office also increases. In order to make this happen, systems
will be devised. It is a major departure and a very positive one for the group. It will be
implemented progressively and will be effective over the next 18 months. In the mean
time companies will continue to recruit senior people till the systems are all in place. For
the first time the group will have a system for mobility, not a perfect one I should add,
but vastly better than the one we presently have.